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<title>Like Afterimages (burnt into immortality) by Sasskarian</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285728">Like Afterimages (burnt into immortality)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian'>Sasskarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wasteland, Baby (I’m in Love With You) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Past Relationship(s), References to Drugs, Visions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:27:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The settlers call her a survivor. Sanctuary calls her a savior. But Mama Murphy just calls her a ghost. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>That’s what she is, after all. Just a two hundred year old ghost.</em>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nate/Nora (Fallout), Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wasteland, Baby (I’m in Love With You) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894897</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Like Afterimages (burnt into immortality)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The settlers call her a survivor. Sanctuary calls her a savior. Codsworth cries when she returns from the wastelands, dragging in another minute— heh— victory for the Minutemen, or another rescued synth she doesn’t tell anyone about. But Mama Murphy just calls her a ghost. </p><p>That’s what she is, after all. Just a two hundred year old ghost. Like a mirage, superimposed on the darkness, burned into immortality by nuclear fallout and tragedy. Evelyn is only sometimes here, those dark gray eyes a pair of rain clouds on the distant horizon, drifting on invisible fronts. The thunder is inside of her, too, a raging storm swirling in her chest, beating fists made of babies crying and gunshots rimmed in frost ringing out against her ribs. </p><p>Mama lays a hand on her heart, wincing. Her fingers— once so slim and able, so strong— fumble the Jet into her lap and she swears, dropping it again before she manages to get it to her lips. Cool powder streaks through her mouth, winds silky and whisper-soft down her throat. No one listens to old Mama when she talks about the colors, how Jet tastes like rainbows and the Mentat rumbles like forgotten gods. But the colors speak up a storm, you know? And those old gods, well, sometimes they have a lot to say. </p><p>It's a change from the village. Used to be, Evelyn would come back and there’d be whispers and looks, rumors dancing around her head like angels. Now there’s an occasional swell of pity, as she shucks off the armor with clangs and exhaustion, as she trudges up the street to the house everyone knows better than to enter, those stormy eyes a whole lifetime away. <em>That was her husband’s name for her</em>, the Jet sings like the sirens from Evelyn’s stories. <em>Stormy, like the song.</em> </p><p>The visions aren’t always kind. Mama doesn’t always know past from future, but the visions tangle up around Evelyn even worse than she’s used to. Nate, he sparkles in their memory, all shining brass buttons and cool, crisp uniforms. Workman’s hands made of calluses and strength, gentle and catching on skin in all the right places, and oh, those sweet brown eyes. Mama sips her tea, seeing the color of him in it, and feels an echo of the pain she knows too well. A pain that snakes tendrils through the settlement, that isn’t her own but no one else can see.</p><p>She sighs, levering herself out of her chair. One of the new settlers, a nice young man with a wicked scar down his face hands her the cane Evelyn foisted on her. At least it’s respect instead of pity that makes him brace her elbow as she gets her feet under her, and then she starts up the main drive, eyes as far away as the girl’s. The Jet paints pictures for her— ghosts of neighbors she never knew, hands raised in greeting, mouths screaming in fear as the explosions rocked the world, pass by and through and around Mama Murphy as the drug rattles around in her lungs like dice in a cup.</p><p>It tells her stories as she walks, slow and shaky, drips of history scattered among the wreckage of a once-healthy neighborhood. The Sumners lived here, pretty as a peach in their little yellow house, with their little white dog that yapped at everything and woke Shaun up night and day. And there, why she— Evelyn— had held little Jamie Lee while his mother had fixed up a hole in their fence. Rosa Whitfield once helped her take in a dress for the Army Ball of ‘74, that dark wine fabric draped over the dining room table pretty as you please. </p><p>She blinks the ghosts away, leaning heavy on her cane as she eases the door open. A wet sniffle greets her and, though she isn’t sure if the sound actually carried or if it’s the Jet pulsing Evie’s pain through her, Mama makes her way unerringly down the hall. Gentle nudges, such a change from the kaleidoscopic drug, turn her left, where Evie sits with her knees pulled to her chest. Her arms are tight around the belly of a fat teddy bear, face buried in its back. </p><p>The blue embroidery on its foot is still somehow visible, despite the charred fabric: <em>Shaun, June 21, 2077</em></p><p>“Ah, kid,” Mama says, easing into the moth-eaten chair. “You’re hurting something bad today.”</p><p>“Did your <em>visions</em> tell you that?” Evie’s voice is normally so calm, such a change from the survival-roughened voice of the settlers, but this is full of acid and rage. <em>Where’s Shaun</em> and <em>We both know how this has to end</em> ring through her head like the proclamations of God himself, and the pieces fall into place with the click of a loud <em>Fuck. You</em>. From outside, the golden glow of the detective’s eyes glint as he walks by the window, clearly checking on Evie and just as clearly not wanting to be in the fallout range of her spiraling anger. Somewhere on the other side of the hill, the dog howls a mourning song, keening their own pain out. </p><p>“Actually, they did.” Mama rests her cane across her knees, battening down her own hatches in the wake of Evie’s emotions. They're fierce today, and wind-whipped, like lightning and nor’easters and radstorms rolled into one deadly trifecta. It's enough to sweep an old woman away, if she lets it. “Take it the merc didn’t have your boy.” </p><p>“Listen, you old bat,” Evie spits, centuries-old eyes flashing steely and hard. “You know <em>nothing</em> of—”</p><p>“I know Jamie Lee once bit Shaun at the park,” Mama interrupts, letting the unmeant insult slide off her. Words said in pain shouldn't be held against someone. “Under that big old maple tree where you’ve planted melons because that was Shaun’s first solid food.” </p><p>Evie stares at her, arms slowly loosening from the stranglehold of the bear. </p><p>“And Rosa helped you with your ballgown that last fall, right after your first…” Mama hesitates, knowledge of the past failing her. “The thing with the black screen and the little heartbeat.” </p><p>“Ultrasound,” Evie whispers, a tear rolling down her cheek. She needed to cry, but the wasteland strips them of the ability to let themselves. (Once you start crying out here, you might never stop.) “I was sick with what I thought was an early flu, but Rosa pushed me into the doctor when I fainted.” She wipes her face. “You can… see all that?”</p><p>Mama laughs, cursing as it turns into a wracking cough that rips fire through her bent back. “These eyes do more than see, kid. I told you you’d find your son.” </p><p>Evie tucks her knees closer to her chest, thumbs rubbing the bears’ paws in an unconscious bid for comfort. “...sometimes I worry about what I’ll actually find,” she admits, quiet and small. “I don’t even know how long it’s been. Not since <em>Kellogg</em> refroze me.” She spits the name like its poison, a physical thing of disgust and hatred. “And… I’m so fucking tired, Mama.”</p><p>Mama knows what she’ll find: the heartbreak on the horizon is clear as day, even without the drugs to help her See. But the choices Evelyn has to make are her own, and the future is always in flux. Maybe that darkness can be smoothed out, or maybe the kid’ll have to break her own heart again.</p><p>“You’ll find more than your son, kid.” Her hands shake around the cane, so she tightens her grip, the Jet starting to run out. Things always get thready here, the last puffs going erratic and staticky. “Hearts and notes buried in steel, and hope scattered along the wasting paths— like those dandelions you planted in the fall, for spring. Like gardens always need patience and nurturing, we all do.” Evie sniffles again, rocking in a motion Mama doesn’t think she notices herself doing. “But you have to become more than a ghost to do it.”</p><p>Satisfied with herself, Mama eases her aching bones from the chair. Any other day, Evelyn would help, walking that fine line between an old woman’s pride and the concern of a friend; today, she stays curled into the corner, crying bitterly in the cruelty of her son's still-standing nursery. <em>She’s not the only ghost around here,</em> Mama thinks, wheezing by the time she gets to the front door: Nate winks in and out of existence, walking up the cracked drive between rows of cheerful yellow flowers waving in the breeze, long burnt to cinders. Another specter, another afterimage burned into the fabric of the world. His smile, a dead thing from the past, melts into a strong-jawed face lined with steel.</p><p>
  <em>Same eyes, though. I wonder if she's noticed.</em>
</p><p>“She’s having a rough day,” the paladin says, one hand motioning the dog to give her space. Mama nods, reaching up to pat his cheek with affection. (It amuses her that he crouches, awkward and shy, for her to do so.) “It… concerns me.”</p><p>“She’ll pull through the storm,” she replies, Jet giving her one final burst before it fizzles out into sparkles and time resumes its normal flow. “She just has a lot of haunting to go through first." Mama squints, the gleam of his armor, his heart, burning like a wildfire he doesn't even know yet. It stings her eyes, sharp against the wet of tears not her own. "Be patient, dancer. It’s worth it.”</p>
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